AP just can’t manage an impartial story if Beck or Palin are involved

In case you wanted to know something about a extreme left wing pet issue you don’t have far to go; there are stories a plenty. You might not know about any dissenters or protests, and hardly any public criticism because such stories typically “aren’t about them”. And what do we get in news stories about right wing pet issues? Well, we must hear both sides, right?

The AP’s Philip Elliott was certainly interested in presenting Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally and the competing rally hosted by Al Sharpton in equal measure, just not so much on material details. For starters, in his report titled Beck says US has `wandered in darkness’ too long, Elliott somehow got the notion Beck “spoke from the very spot where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech 47 years ago.” Except Beck purposefully stood several steps down from that spot. Now, if Beck chose to speak from several steps above where the Rev. Dr. King actually stood, wouldn’t that be construed as Beck trying to symbolically show he was “above” King or somehow superior to him? Of course it would; that detail would matter a great deal in the latter scenario. But in the unbiased world of AP the fact that Beck stood lower than King is reduced to an over-simplified “over there on the steps” attitude.

This detail was omitted for a later report in Elliott’s Beck: Help us restore traditional American values. But both reports attempt to down play the size of the crowd, as “tens of thousands”. Of course the National Park Service doesn’t offer official attendance accounts of these public rallies any more (thanks to the Million Man March, which was hardly half a million people) but Beck’s rally had easily 500,000 people attend. See some photos for yourself:Glenn Beck Rally Picture Guaranteed to Drive Media Crazy
August 28, 2010 by Noel Sheppard

But in the second Philip Elliott piece we get a new detail right up front: the fact that it was a “predominantly white crowd”…, which of course is supposed to mean they’re just a bunch of racists. Of all the speakers who joined Beck, Elliott tells only about Sarah Palin in the first story, and he’s sure to mention her again in later reports. Buried near the end of the second report is a scant mention of Dr. Alveda King’s (Martin Luther King, Jr.’s niece) comments at the event, which was not included at all in the earlier story. Neither story mentions any other speaker at the Beck rally.

But we sure get a lot of information about Al Sharpton in a news story about Glenn Beck’s rally. And what do other news outlets have to report on the event?